Padma Shri awardee a pioneer in scientific ethno-veterinary medicine

Thanjavur-based Padma Shri awardee Punniyamurthy Natesan, a pioneer of scientific ethno-veterinary medicine, has been on a mission for over four decades, to wean the country’s farmers off their over-dependence on chemical inputs.

“My intervention is to see that we get clean milk and eggs from the livestock and clean dung and urine which is going to be the base for organic and natural farming in India,” he told The Hindu on Monday.

Born in an agrarian family from Vallam village, Dr. Punniyamurthy did his schooling in Thanjavur and Poondi, and graduate studies at the Madras Madras Veterinary College. He has over 45 years’ experience in teaching, extension and research in institutions such as Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, TANUVAS, University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology, and National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), among others.

A visit to leading universities in the United States and Canada in 1997 gave him an inkling to what would soon become a central issue in global agricultural systems – the growing spectre of anti-microbial resistance (AMR), where micro-organisms evolve to resist medicines designed to kill or inhibit them, making infections harder, sometimes impossible, to treat and adding to the disease burden of a nation.

What was more appalling, he added, was that nobody was working on the fate of these drugs on these antibiotics in the soil or the environmental system.

Standardising nature cures

He continued to teach at Veterinary College and Research Institute in Namakkal, but was increasingly drawn to the work of traditional medicine in the field. He quit his career in teaching in 2001, and utilised his background in pharmacology and toxicology to integrate clinically effective herbal remedies (based on traditional Siddha principles) against Mastitis, Foot and Mouth Disease, Lumpy Skin Disease and a score of other conditions in a stand-alone mode. It took some 10 years for me to standardise some of the treatments,” Dr. Punniyamurthy said.

“ I am now concentrating on developing preventive healthcare so that we will have a livestock-centric agriculture, food safety, and a living, safe soil. The Padma Shri will provide a great impetus to that movement,” he said.